On June 14, a House Appropriations subcommittee gave some researchers cause for celebration when it surprisingly voted to remove a provision in a government spending bill that extended a ban on federal funding of human embryo research. However, their glee was short-lived. The full panel turned around on June 25 and adopted an amendment to continue the research ban. John Eppig, senior staff scientist at Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, doubts that the ban will be overturned anytime soon, particularly in an election year. "I don't think anyone is going to get votes if they say they will remove a ban on this research," he comments. "It's not in anyone's interest politically because it's difficult to explain to the public the potential research benefits" in cancer and immunology, for example, resulting from such work. According to the Washington Post (J.E. Yang, June 26, 1996, page A4), the House Appropriations ...
Notebook
On June 14, a House Appropriations subcommittee gave some researchers cause for celebration when it surprisingly voted to remove a provision in a government spending bill that extended a ban on federal funding of human embryo research. However, their glee was short-lived. The full panel turned around on June 25 and adopted an amendment to continue the research ban. John Eppig, senior staff scientist at Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, doubts that the ban will be overturned anytime soon,
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